Ramblings

If there’s one thing I don’t think I’d ever get used to in China it’s breakfast. Breakfast here is basically the same food as lunch and dinner – just less. So when my teacher surprised my class by bringing in “breakfast” it was basically our lunch. She brought us meat buns and this strange twisted sweet bread. The bread reminded me of a less sweet version of Olle Bollen – the Dutch doughnuts my family makes for New Years – and it made me excited to get back and celebrate Christmas and New Years!

A few weeks ago when we were traveling to Chengde my professor and I saw a large group of cars parked on the shoulder of the road. He told me that they were probably a car club. Car club? Car clubs are made up of either the same kind of car or made up of people with similar interests. Then, that club goes out for a day and drives everywhere together. So, if it’s just the same kind of car they  drive around and take breaks together, if they have similar interests they just all meet and drive to whatever place to do whatever together.  How do you join a car club? Probably the internet. I wonder if there’s a Jeep club…

Another fun fact I learned was that the government does regulate who can drive a car on what day  - the hope is to help with the pollution (hah.). If your license plate ends in a certain number you can’t drive on a certain day of the week. Example: if your license plate ends in a 1 or 6 you can’t drive on Mondays. The police can pull you over and fine you if you drive on a day you aren’t supposed to be.

There’s a place called Nanluguxiang that is a touristy hutong attraction. The people live in the hutongs and go to the main streets to sell various food and keepsakes. I had seen some cups there that I really liked and decided I wanted to buy the next time we were there. Well, we went back last week and I looked around at all the vendors and didn’t see exactly what I wanted. Eventually I asked a guy that had similar items if he had any of the cups. He told me he did, but I had to follow him. Hah. I turned to Micah and made him follow me follow this guy down an alleyway. All was fine until he turned down an even darker alley. I stopped and debated whether or not I really wanted to go in. He came back when he realized I wasn’t following him and gestured for me to go in. Micah and I went in and went through some smaller alleys until we found his house. The guy had led us to his house where his wife was and…. shelves of the cups I wanted! I spent forever looking through everything and talking with the couple.

The heat turns on November 15 and I cannot be more excited.

This Thursday we went to a museum in memory of the Japanese/Chinese war and the Marco Polo Bridge. The museum was shocking… to say the least.

I mainly took pictures of pictures with captions because the captions were odd and fairly straightforward. You may not be able to read them, but when I come back I can show you.

….

On the right are bones from Chinese women.

Linden bought this mouse pad for her brother in the gift shop… the translation is a bit off, haha.

This adorable puppy hung out with us while we waited for everyone to come out of the museum.

All different kinds of these lions lined the bridge.

I went to a tea market with two Calvin kids and one of their language partners on Friday. It was really fun and we got to sit down with people and try different kinds of tea. Everyone was really nice and genuinely interested in what we were doing in Beijing. On the way back from the tea market the language partner and I were talking and she told me how when she first saw me she thought I looked like Avril Lavigne. Interesting.

So, we actually have 3 more weeks of Chinese class instead of 2. Less than a month and I'll be back! That's crazy.

An Uneventful Week

 This past week was a bit different than other weeks. Not much happened because we spent the whole week preparing for our midterms that were on Thursday and Friday.  Midterms are taken VERY seriously here and I’ll admit that I was scared out of my mind. Of course all the stress really wasn’t necessary as the tests weren’t as bad as they were made out to be. Funny story though – everyone has to put their bags, books, phones, etc at the front of the class before taking the test. So I brought mine up – PHONE ON SILENT – to the teacher. Five minutes into the class someone’s phone starts vibrating. Everyone ignores it because it’s probably just a call and will end soon. Nope. I was sitting there all annoyed at whoever didn’t turn their phone off because I couldn’t concentrate. The teacher listened to each of the bags and called a guy up to check his phone. He goes up and says it isn’t his. She listens more and thinks it’s coming from a different bag. MINE.  I guess I had forgotten to turn my usual Thursday morning alarm off…

One day while we were taking a study break and just talking in my room some people discovered that stuff can stick to the wall above my desk. I had noticed this sticky stuff in the very beginning and just never said anything about it because there isn’t much I can do about it, but everyone found it amusing.

We only have three weeks of Chinese classes left! I can just imagine how fast that time is going to go.

I gave in finally and wore a mask out Friday. The pollution was awful and I’m tired of getting sick because of it.  But ironically I got sick that night with food poisoning.  I swear, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. So I ended up not going to the Great Wall on Saturday. I gave my ticket to another girl in my group so she could go, so I think it all ended up for the best! I’m feeling much better now, but I can’t pinpoint what made me sick so I’m a bit paranoid to eat again.

Wednesday some more places were knocked down. It wasn’t as intense as last time, but it was still a shock.

Green Tea Oreos

For my culture class we’re reading a book called Rickshaw that describes a man’s life as a rickshaw puller. The book takes place in Beijing and mentions many places we’ve been to ourselves.  And coincidentally (probably not really) we had a Hutong tour Thursday with rickshaws. These rickshaws were a bit of an upgrade compared to the one in the book – they are now bikes whereas they used to be just a man pulling the rickshaw. Hutong in chinese means alleyway. Hutongs kind of remind me of a maze with little roads everywhere and the traditional style houses all next to each other.

I have a goal to one day sit on a little table outside a restaurant and eat my dinner...but it's getting cold so I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.

We stopped at one of these traditional style houses part way through the tour. The guy who lives there was explaining to us the different houses (where the parents live, and then what son lives in what house) and then decided to casually mention how this particular place was being used to film a TV show. Say WHAT?!  They showed us the scripts/schedule for the show and explained how they fixed up certain areas of the house just for the show.  I have no idea what show they were filming there, but it was a cool surprise!

This is the guy that lives there.

Schedule/script for the show.

I specifically took this picture for you, Dad - Snoopy!

A Dominos opened up by our school. There was a whole celebration the opening day with mascots, a red carpet, balloons, fireworks, and of course a discount. I think our whole school got a pizza at some point. The pepperoni pizza tasted pretty similar, but I don't plan on going back anytime soon.

My roommate and I decided to spend some quality time together by buying all the oreo flavors available and try one of each. We may have felt a bit sick afterwards…especially after eating the nasty flavors such as grape/peach, raspberry, green tea, and peanut butter. The ones that we liked were the normal flavors.... of course.

Sunday night I met with Susie again but this time she brought her family friend along. He’s 28 and they’ve known each other since they were little. His English is very impressive! We went to a Japanese restaurant, Coldstone, then sat at a bar for awhile.  I ended up finding out that he works as an assistant for a famous Asian actor that is like the equivalent of Jackie Chan! He has been all over the world working for this guy managing his meetings and having dinner with people like Leonardo Dicaprio. It was such a fun and relaxing night!

Chengde

This weekend we went to Chengde! Chengde is just outside of Beijing where the Emperor would go to escape the summer heat. Unfortunately we were not escaping the heat as it's October, but instead we went into the cold. Saturday we saw the Emperor's resort and Sunday we went to Sledge Hammer Peak to check out the giant rock.

The wood is a special type that has a strong smell and is supposed to last forever

Emperor's seat

Empress Cixi

This was a sign in our hotel - too cute!

And there's the rock.

I didn't climb all the way to the Sledge Hammer rock because I had a bit of a "pollution cold" and wasn't feeling the giant staircase up to it so instead I went and saw the Frog Rock (below). I still don't see how it looks like a frog...

This weekend I was also able to meet with my friend Susie! The last time I saw her was in the beginning of the semester when we both didn't have school. She's preparing for the SAT now and so it's difficult to find times to meet with our busy study schedules. She's learning 400 English words a day! We went for lunch and she was using her new vocabulary words and honestly, I wasn't even sure what half of them meant! 

This is pigeon. It was actually really good! 

Not everything we had is in this picture, but I had chicken feet (which is VERY difficult to eat because you have to put the whole foot in your mouth and then use your tongue to separate the bones), pigs feet, shrimp dumplings, spring rolls, mango nectar, egg tarts, beef pastries, etc.)

Later we went for a walk around the streets and got these giant drinks. They're freshly prepared and too good to share!

Last Monday night at Bible study someone mentioned seeing a shirt that said "Life is like a bicycle". I found it funny because when you hear that you're like "what?!" But the Chinese people didn't find it funny and knew exactly what it was referring to. Turns out it does correlate a bit with the Bible, but also with a Chinese proverb meaning that you need to continue to move forward with your life because if you stand still you will fall. Huh. The little quote I have as a subtitle for this blog sounds a lot like that - what a coincidence.